


Not That Kind of Girl: Five Years Post-Lennox House

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012), Sucker Punch (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Gen, mentions of medical abuse, rated T for thematic elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 09:53:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20794715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "Jack as Babydoll, Pitch as Blue, North as the High Roller, Tooth as Rocket and Bunnymund as Sweet Pea? Other roles filled as you will."No, Kevin, I know this isn’t your fault, I know you’ve never seen Sucker Punch. It’s all right. Go back to the phone.So you know what? Yeah, I do have Jack as Babydoll and Bunnymund as Sweet Pea. But this fill is actually Aster “Bunny” Monde giving an interview to a magazine, five years after her escape, as one of the only survivors of the Lennox House incident.





	Not That Kind of Girl: Five Years Post-Lennox House

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 9/28/2016.

Not That Kind of Girl: Five Years Post-Lennox House  
  
Dear readers, today we present an exceptional rare interview with Aster “Bunny” Monde, one of the few surviving inmates of the incident at the Lennox House for the Mentally Insane. Five years after the fire that led to the investigation of the institution, the exposure of horrifying levels of criminal abuse, and the eventual closing of the facility, Ms. Monde enlightens us on the strange intersections of recovery and propriety, and how we might better prevent other Lennox Houses in the future.  
  
_Sandra Mann: Good afternoon, Aster. You’re looking very well! As you know, one of the topics of this interview is recovery, and you look almost completely recovered from the incident! Would you say that’s an accurate statement?_  
  
Aster Monde: Good afternoon, Sandra. First of all, thank you for using my real name. I never want anything to do with the nickname I got in the asylum ever again. As to your question, I should hope I look completely recovered. I’m not, but it’s important that I look that way.  
  
_Sandra: Could you please elaborate on that statement?_  
  
Aster: For more pages than your magazine has printed since its first issue. To try to keep it brief—I have to look like I’m totally recovered, and I have to look totally normal, because it’s the only way to make some people think that I shouldn’t have been in Lennox House in the first place, and that’s the only way to make them think that places like that should be shut down—that there might be some ‘normal’ people institutionalized by mistake. That was what catapulted Jackie Frost’s story into the limelight after all, that way of thinking.  
  
_Sandra: Yes, Jackie Frost. An incredibly tragic situation. I know you’ve talked about her extensively before, but do you have anything further that you’d be willing to share today?_  
  
Aster: I always end up repeating myself when it comes to Jackie, and I still haven’t seen anything I’ve said do a da—a lick of good. I wish to God I hadn’t told anyone about the fantasy world she shared with me and the others who planned to escape. It seems like people are more interested in hearing about all the details of that than they are in helping other women in similar situations.  
  
_Sandra: You mean the falsely committed?_  
  
Aster: Thanks for bringing that up. I actually mean all the institutionalized. Jackie Frost hadn’t been diagnosed with any mental illness, and therefore her lobotomy wasn’t supported on any medial grounds. But that’s not the tragedy. The tragedy of Lennox House isn’t about Jackie. To think that it’s about Jackie is to think that the tragedy of these institutions is that ‘healthy’ people are being mistakenly confined in them. No. Lennox House would have had all its problems even if every single one of its inmates had been correctly diagnosed. We—the inmates, the prisoners of Lennox House—we are all human beings, and deserve to be treated as such. If we are ill, shouldn’t the place we leave our homes for be a place of healing? Lennox House treated us as lower than animals, and no healing could occur there. I won’t go into the details of the abuses in this interview. There’s plenty of material on that already and if people don’t believe me or listen to my plea for humanity without knowing every loathsome device and action, then I don’t think they’ve ever intended to listen to me at all.  
  
_Sandra: I’m afraid we don’t have much space left, so I can only ask you one more question. It’s obvious that you hate Lennox House and all that led to it. What can you tell our readers today to prevent future Lennox Houses?_  
  
Aster: Prevent future Lennox Houses? Sandra, they’re already here. I’d be glad to prevent fires, deaths of the inmates, and stop every single lobotomy, but I_want_ to promote investigations of every mental institution in the United States. If there’s abuse to be exposed—and there is—I want to force it into the light, no matter how many institutional shutdowns it forces. But, all right, all right. I know that most readers aren’t in a situation to do anything about that. So, to prevent Lennox Houses from being built in the future? Let go of the idea that there’s only one right way to be or to think. Let go of the idea that one person should be allowed to have complete control over another person’s life. Jackie Frost was able to be sent to Lennox House because there’s a system in place where the will of one person can be totally imposed on another. I was in Lennox House because there’s an idea held by too many people today that the way I am is inherently wrong. And while there’s also a good number of people who would agree that neither Jackie nor I deserved to be in Lennox House—provided we look, act, and talk in certain ways—they’re not my concern, even though I do take care to look the way I do so that the fewest number of people will think I deserved Lennox House. No, my main concern is to reach those people who think that Lennox House and places like it have a proper function and that they have the ability to function properly. They don’t. To prevent future Lennox Houses, we must be able to say, “There is no functional Lennox House, and no one, absolutely no one, deserves to be in a Lennox House.”  
  
_Sandra: Thank you, Aster._  
  
Aster: I’ll thank you when I see my actual words in print.


End file.
